Pennsylvania county jails turning away from immigration role

More Pennsylvania counties with jails are limiting their cooperation with federal immigration authorities following a court decision last year in favor of an Allentown man wrongly held in Lehigh County Jail on suspicion that he was in the country illegally.

Fourteen Pennsylvania counties, including Lehigh, adopted formal policies in 2014 against holding prisoners for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reflecting the federal court ruling that the agency's detention instructions are only requests.

Those counties joined 18 others that already had such policies on the books, are drafting a policy or have an informal practice of not honoring the immigration agency's requests, according to a survey by Temple University Beasley School of Law's Sheller Center for Social Justice.

Only two counties, Berks and Northampton, have written policies directing corrections officials to comply with immigration detainers. Another 18 reported that corrections officials have an informal practice of holding prisoners when ICE asks them to do so.

Regionally, Bucks and Montgomery counties also have policies against honoring the detainers. Carbon County reported it has no formal policy but does not honor immigration detainers unless they are signed by a federal judge, which is typically not the case. Schuylkill and Monroe counties do not have written policies but reported they hold prisoners who are subjects of detainers.

Advocates for Pennsylvania's immigrant communities, who say immigration enforcement efforts too often ensnare people who are in violation of the laws through no fault of their own, say the results of the survey are encouraging.

"We're actually in a better state than I was expecting," said Sundrop Carter, of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. "To me it is encouraging that counties are paying attention to this issue."

But Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said local law enforcement cooperation is crucial to enforcement of the nation's immigration policies.

"We're just cooperating with the part of our government that does enforce immigration laws," Morganelli said. "If we don't do this, we effectively have no immigration law."

ICE officials said in a statement that the release of criminal offenders who are also wanted for violations of immigration law undermines the agency's ability to protect public safety and enforce immigration policy. They pointed to four instances in which individuals with gang affiliations and prior convictions for sex crimes and firearms offenses were released from custody in Philadelphia and had to be apprehended by ICE agents.

"These scenarios can potentially create an officer safety issue when ICE officers have to attempt to apprehend the most serious offenders outside a controlled penal setting," the statement said.

The decision that the Sheller Center survey credits with motivating at least some of the change in Pennsylvania came in a civil rights lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on behalf of Ernesto Galarza.

Galarza was working on an Allentown construction site in 2008 when an undercover police officer purchased cocaine from one of Galarza's co-workers. Galarza and three other men were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and taken to Lehigh County Jail, according to court documents.

Although Galarza gave his place of birth as Perth Amboy, N.J., and had his Pennsylvania driver's license, bank card, health insurance card and Social Security card in his wallet, Allentown police officer Christie Correa told ICE agents that she believed all four men had provided false information about their identities and were foreign nationals, court papers say.

Based on the information that Correa provided, an ICE agent sent a detainer to the Lehigh County Jail instructing officials not to release Galarza, even though he had posted bail on the drug charge.

As a result, Galarza was held for four days until ICE agents interviewed him and realized the mistake. He sued the federal government, ICE agents, Lehigh County and Allentown police. In a 2012 decision, U.S. District Judge James Knoll Gardner dismissed Galarza's claims against Lehigh County, finding it was simply complying with federal law.

In a 2-1 decision last year, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Gardner's decision, finding that the federal regulation that allows ICE to issue immigration detainers clearly defines them as requests. Circuit Judge Julio M. Fuentes also wrote for the majority that requiring local authorities to hold people for immigration violations would infringe on the Constitution's protection of states' rights.

Galarza ultimately settled his suit against Lehigh County for $95,000. Earlier, he had settled his claims against the federal government and Allentown police for a total of $50,000.

In response, Lehigh County commissioners adopted the policy against complying with ICE requests to hold prisoners. Executive Tom Muller said the decision was to prevent future financial penalties on taxpayers.

Temple University Beasley School of Law professor Jennifer Lee said the Sheller Center undertook the student-run survey at the request of the ACLU and Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition to build a picture of how each county has responded to the decision in Galarza's case.

The survey helps advocates understand how officials in each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are likely to respond to ICE detainers and where to focus efforts to change the policy, Lee said. Pennsylvania is unique in taking a county-by-county approach, she said.

While Lee said a statewide policy on local compliance with ICE detainers is needed, Carter said she believes change needs to come in the form of broad changes in national immigration policy.

"Unfortunately we have a completely broken system where people just don't have options that give them a legal option to stay in the country," Carter said.

Lehigh County's policy states that prison officials will give immigration authorities notice when they plan to release a person who is the subject of an immigration detainer, but not hold people beyond the time they have posted bail or completed serving a sentence.

Under Northampton County's policy, prison officials are instructed to hold people identified in immigration detainers for no longer than 48 hours and ensure they have access to phones to contact ICE and challenge the detainer if they believe it was issued in error.

Berks County, which is the only other county with a written policy of complying with ICE detainers, instructs corrections officials to notify ICE when it releases the subject of an immigration detainer, but not to hold them for longer than four hours.

The survey found counties that do not comply with ICE detainers had reasons ranging from a shortage of jail beds and other law enforcement resources, to an affirmative decision not to become involved in immigration enforcement in order to protect the relationship between immigrant communities and police.

"There is a chilling effect," Carter said, "People feel that they can't report crimes or cooperate as witnesses to crimes if they feel that any interaction with police is going to put them at risk of becoming a target of immigration and customs enforcement."

Morganelli argues it is appropriate for local corrections officials to work with ICE and noted that people who are held on immigration detainers wind up in jail for violations of state laws, not immigration violations. The federal government identifies people it wants held.

He argued the possibility of making a mistake is no reason to stop working with immigration officials.

"The reality is that Galarza is a very rare case," Morganelli said. "Those kinds of mistakes are very few and far between."